


luminous you shine, even in the dust

by thelittlenyx (Nyx_Aki)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: M/M, Secret Santa 2017, a story of finding beauty, and Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 11:54:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13213200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyx_Aki/pseuds/thelittlenyx
Summary: A thousand spotlights, a million eyes, and you in the center. And yet, they don’t see.In a stage of ice where the competition can be cutting edge and your performance judged by numbers not heart, it’s easy to forget when you were something or everything. It’s easy to focus on when you were nothing.It’s easy to break.(a short story of finding beauty, and hope.)





	luminous you shine, even in the dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [topcatnikki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/topcatnikki/gifts).



Out on the ice, you’re something, you’re everything, you’re nothing.

A thousand spotlights, a million eyes, and you in the center. And yet, they don’t see.

_Heart? What heart? Effort? You slipped on that axel, your hands touched the ground, are you sure you’re ready for the next competition? Are you sure you’re ready at all?_

On the stage where the audience shreds with their eyes and the judges with their numbers, your tale becomes a tally and your dance a score, and if your points aren’t high enough- you’re just not there.

In a stage of ice where the competition can be cutting edge and your performance judged by numbers not heart, it’s easy to forget when you were something or everything. It’s easy to focus on when you were nothing.

It’s easy to break.

 ****

 

When Yuuri’s heart fractures in the lonely parking lot and his emotions overflow from the cracks, Viktor, for a fleeting moment, wonders if he’s gone too far. Wonders if a heart so made of glass can be put back together again.

_(he needn’t have worried.)_

 

****

 

There’s an art form in Japan, Yuuri once tells Viktor, centuries old. A bowl which is shattered is recrafted again, piecing the shards together with meticulousness and melded with lacquer dusted in gold or silver. Instead of hiding the cracks like a brand of shame, it is proudly recreated into something beautiful- an indelible aspect of the object as a whole.

 _Kintsugi:_ making what is broken beautiful.

 

****

 

Yuuri’s cracks and fractures are there for the whole world to see, to pick at. _The skater with the world’s biggest glass heart,_ they whispered. _Can he get up again once he’s fallen? Is this the last straw? Glass breaks easily, you know._

_He’s cracked enough already. Surely he’ll stop before he shatters entirely._

Viktor, watching the world whisper behind their hands, wants to scream. Wants to shout, to rage at them for thinking that Yuuri’s fragility is bigger than him. For thinking that Yuuri is weak, that he is broken, that people who have fallen over and over again are unable to stand up in the end.

But he doesn’t rage. Instead, he watches, and waits as Yuuri silences the crowds with his heart and his hands and his body, weaving his story across the ice. Ethereal, sylphlike, powerful.

Yuuri is cracked, Yuuri has broken.

But that doesn’t mean that he can’t shine.

_(Fools, Viktor thinks. Fools.)_

 ****

 

_Do you know what makes things beautiful?_

_The fact that it’s tarnished, and can still shine._

_When you’re on the ice, you become something, everything, and nothing. It’s easy to remember only the nothing-  painfully, woefully easy to see the cracks and fissures in your performance and your heart that widens after each fall and failure._

_But what is strength without failure?_

_What is beauty without age?_

_Katsuki Yuuri is the skater with the world’s biggest glass heart. Katsuki Yuuri, the man who fell, and broke, and got up again, whole and scarred and lovely._

_Wear your tears with pride, line your fractures with gold and silver. Wabi-sabi, you once told me: acceptance of imperfection. You are whole. You are marred, you have been broken, yet you stood again and again. A silver lining made a bowl beautiful, but your marks of battle made you shine._

_Don’t you see, Yuuri?_

Viktor, watching his student, his teacher, his love, from the sidelines, knows he needn’t have worried at all.

_(stay close to me, and let us shine.)_

 

 

~for Nikki- you shine.~

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of a small Secret Santa a bunch of us partook in to celebrate the New Year's, and each other. Love you guys.
> 
> Nikki (IT'S MEEEEE YOUR SS HAHAH), I hope you like it. And keep on shining. The light's still there even if you can't see it y'know. 
> 
> I can be found shitposting in little-lapis-lazuline.tumblr.com. Shitposts make up 70% of me.


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